On Going Through Old Photographs

Which is actually the title of a poem I wrote -- one of the few that have been published.

I do that periodically, because I've found, in thirty years of making pictures, that my artist mind far outstrips my editor mind sometimes. It's become all too common for me to go back through old material and say to myself, "Why have I never printed that? It's fantastic!"

So, here's a little something I found recently.




Every once in a while I run into an image that has too many possibilities. I do most of my work in the darkroom (or in Photoshop), unlike those photographers who do their work in the camera. As a result, I make crappy negatives, but they have a lot of ways to go. Here's one that first appeared on the scanner roughly like this:



















I looked at it a bit, and liked it, but I wanted to see what else was possible. So I played around a bit and came up with this:




















I'm not sure which I like better.